Cru Jones Society

 

I had the pleasure of indulging several more events not ready for primetime this weekend, and I’m here on this glorious Monday, which came way too fucking fast this week, to share my thoughts with you. On deck is rowing, weightlifting, team handball, and much much more. Please join me, won’t you?

Rowing

Everyone you’ll ever meet who has rowed competitively at any point in their life will be a dick. Usually these people live on the east coast, which only enhances their dickiness. They’ll talk about waking up at 4 a.m. to go out on the water in the freezing cold with some jagoff coach barking at them and practicing their sculls until their shoulders burn and their legs feel like they’ll crumble like burnt paper. And they’ll talk about this really romantically like the way a recovering alcoholic describes the way the Jack Daniel’s used to majestically glide down their throat and send their problems away like a fairy tale magician. And then they’ll ask you if you’ve ever rowed and give you shit because you haven’t – like you’re some leper who doesn’t know what it’s like to be a real man.

And you’ll tell this guy that he looks like every other rower you’ve ever seen – a.k.a. a dead ringer for the zombie-looking Jim Tavare from “Last Comic Standing” wearing Smalls’ hat from The Sandlot - and that you’re sorry you didn’t row in college because in college you preferred waking up around noon next to a girl with loose sexual practices from the I Leta Theta (say it out loud) sorority instead of waking up at the buttcrack of dawn to hop on a boat with three other dudes to wreck your shoulder ligaments and chisel your physique down to resemble Tracy Gold mid-eating disorder. Fuck off, rower. Leave me alone.

So I watched rowing this weekend, and in addition to being a sport populated with guys like the ones I described above, it’s incredibly boring to watch. Lady E likes it, but couldn’t give me a reason why. I’ll concede that watching rowing is oddly hypnotic – the rhythm of all the oars pulling at the same time, the bicycles on the path next to the water, everyone moving in unison – it’s entrancing as hell.

Now that I think about it, rowing is the Olympic Hypnotoad.

People stare blankly at the rowers unaware of everything else, just enchanted by the rhythmic moving and calming consistency of it all. Nothing interesting happens, someone wins, and everyone looks miserable afterward. Then yet another commercial for the dreadful-looking “Kath & Kim” comes on, you realize you’d rather saw off your own feet than watch this stupid show, and you change the channel like a sane person so as not to get sucked into another mindless rowing race or have to live through another one of the lame jokes put forth by Molly Shannon.

One huge advantage to watching rowing: The Valium Effect. If you’re having trouble sleeping, rowing is like a virtual Quaalude. Watch 5 minutes of these guys sculling in unison, and you’re out like a 5 year-old after a day at Disneyland. In fact, I’d put rowing at #2 on the Valium Effect Hierarchy of Sleep Aids. The Top 5 in reverse order are: 5) “World Poker Tour”; 4) Baseball game replay; 3) that show about space narrated by Sigourney Weaver whose name I can’t remember; 2) Olympic rowing 1) Winner and still champion of sending you to restful sleep: “The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross.”

Women’s Weightlifting

Lady E wrote her master’s thesis on gender studies, and since we’ve been dating for nearly 4 years, that means I now have a lot of thoughts on gender construction, gender perception, and gender identity. Without turning into a philosophical windbag and transforming this article into a pedantic, half-cooked sociological think piece, I’ll just say that I was oddly moved watching women’s weightlifting last weekend.

It was women in one of the lighter weight classes competing in both the snatch and the clean & jerk.

Quick aside: Could you pick any two more hilarious names for weight lifting events that happen in succession? “After the snatch, we’ve got the clean & jerk!” I’ll say. That’s how it usually goes for me – I see the snatch, then it’s off to clean & jerk indeed.

Anyway, these women were short and built like tree trunks. Their hair was pulled back, they had standard uniforms on and looked about as un-feminine as you could get. When I watch weightlifting all I can think about is 20 some odd years ago when the East German women used to get up there, and they were all ‘roided up looking like Magnus Samuelsson. They were the opposite of femininity and the constant steroid use robbed them of it. They’d lift their obscene amount of weight, drop it, howl at the moon, and walk off with no emotion. If you were a fan of robots, you were a fan of East German chemical experiments.

These days, you watch these women lift incredible amounts of weight over their heads, and to the surprise of everyone (Read: me), they’re excited as hell when they’re done. They squeal with delight and dive off the stage into the arms of an excited coach after a successful lift. And their eyes well up with heartbreak after an unsuccessful attempt. The emotion is oddly refreshing and reminds you that these women aren’t superhuman muscle factories devoid of feelings, they’re people with hopes and dreams just like us. Granted, their hopes and dreams are on a different scale than most of us, but the point still stands.

Watching the women emote the way they did reminded me of their humanity, which in turn displayed their femininity. The weightlifters don’t have the conventional beauty of say, the Polish volleyball team (which is filled with unreal hotties, btw), but they’re still women beautiful as ever. They had dreams, and they fucking went for it, consequences be damned. I respect the hell out of that, and it reminds me that we’ve come a great distance since the soulless East German machine set the sport and gender relations back about 50 years by feeding its female weightlifters supplements that would make Barry Bonds take pause. I love women’s weightlifting because it reminds me of all the ways I love the unique, unusual, unclassifiable, wonderfully complicated specimen known as woman.

Team Handball

This looks like it would be ridiculous fun to play. Before it came on Lady E asked me to explain to her what team handball was like. I said, “Well, it’s kind of like ultimate Frisbee, except you can run further with the ball. Actually, it’s sort of like soccer, but with your hands. And then there’s an element of lacrosse with the halo around the goal that no one can shoot within, but there’s no offsides. Now that I think about it, the closest comparison is to water polo…” By this point, she had already put her face back in her book, and I still didn’t know how to explain it properly.

To be honest, I don’t know what the rules are to team handball, and god knows I can’t be bothered to look them up. So suffice to say that I sat on my couch and just basked in how much fun this sport looks. There’s plenty of hard throwing, goalie futility, and, like volleyball, shame inflicted via high speed ball to the face.

I watched the women’s gold medal match between Norway and Romania on Sunday, which gave me the added mental challenge of trying to figure out how to pronounce the players’ names. I love names where there’s a “j” right in the middle and an “o” with a line through it. It’s like learning to read all over again which is arguably the most exciting time in anyone’s life. When you combine those mental gymnastics with goalies catching leather in the grill, you’ve got E Dagger entertainment approved!

Soccer, Tennis & Boxing

I’ll watch fencing. I’ll watch judo. Hell, I even gave equestrian another chance even though part of me despises horses, and since I know they’ll fucking eat you. But I cannot bring myself to watch soccer, tennis, or boxing. For me, the Olympics are about sports you never watch and rarely have the opportunity to watch outside of the occasional hungover Saturday between sports seasons. I have plenty of opportunity to watch soccer, tennis, and boxing outside of the Olympics and choose not to. Why would I start now?

Soccer bores the piss out of me. It’s like jerking off for two hours with no payoff. The ball bounces around an enormous pasture, players run like hell all over the sumbitch chasing it, and the score still often ends with less than three total goals scored. You’re thinking to yourself, “Just pick it up, you dummy! Things will be much easier if you do!” It’s a lot of work with no reward, which is what I’d imagine it’s like to be a Christian and getting to hell only to find out the Jews were right. Man, I spent all that time working my ass off to get to heaven, and it turns out all I needed to do was fast ONE DAY out of the year. What was I thinking?!

Tennis is a sport I used to enjoy rendered boring as fuck due to technology. The rackets are so good now, you get very few long rallies, no one charges the net anymore, and you spend a lot of time feeling sorry for whoever receives serve. Plus, there’s no one even remotely compelling in the sport anymore. Andy Roddick blows, Rafael Nadal is an uninteresting punk, and Roger Federer makes Tim Duncan look like Johnny fucking Carson in terms of personality. Next.

We come now to boxing, which, if we’re talking in terms of pay-per-view, is dead or on life support. When it comes to the Olympics, take everything that’s wrong with boxing commercially, send it to the bizarro world, and multiply it by ten. No one understands the scoring, the judging just feels crooked, and you have no idea who any of these bastards are. Quick, name one boxer from the United States. You’re quicker to recite your car’s VIN than name anyone who’s boxed for the U.S. in the last 12 years.

Why is this? First, there’s too many weight classes. Do we really need divisions every ten pounds? Couldn’t we consolidate at least a few of these so it’s easier to follow? And seriously, are you interested in watching a couple of rail thin, anorexic-looking 115 lb. guys with wispy mustaches throw punches at each other your sister could take? Secondly, switch to a “10-point must” system, which is the same as pro boxing and mixed martial arts. Sure, it sucks, but it’s better than whatever the hell convoluted bullshit they have now. Third, take off the goddamn helmets, make the gloves smaller, and let’s see who does their thing better than anyone else. Gloves inhibit real fighting because they prevent damage to the hands which doesn’t happen in a real fight. Boxing isn’t an art, it’s a fucking fight. Let’s see one. And finally, if you’re not going to take any of the above suggestions, just get rid of boxing altogether and let mixed martial arts fighters do their thing. It’s more entertaining, it’s more like a real fight, and it’s competition in its purest form.

Mixed martial arts fighting is the Olympics when there are no Olympics, and it happens every month. Big fights have that Olympic vibe that’s undeniable. The BJ Penn/Sean Sherk fight had that a couple months ago, and the bar I was at was electric. And when Olympics are over next week, it’ll be all we have until everyone sits transfixed on Vancouver in 2010. In the meantime, we’ll all have to go back to our normal, non-gold medal-having lives.

But at least there’s always verbally smacking down uppity fucking rowers and watching UFC fights at Andrew’s. Small consolation, I know. But better than nothing.

Until next time…

edagger@crujonessociety.com